Asif Kapadia quotes:

My wife Victoria Harwood was art director on 'Far North,' and she had designed my student film, 'The Sheep Thief.'

The Tour de France would make a great movie. Drugs, corruption, political chicanery, guys risking their lives - everything you need for a great sports drama.

I wanted to make a film that wouldn't just appeal to Formula One fans. That's what the great sports documentaries do - 'Hoop Dreams,' 'When We Were Kings' - they're human dramas first, sport second, if at all.

You don't have to be someone who likes walking a tightrope across the Twin Towers to watch 'Man On Wire.'

There are no drivers like Formula One drivers. They are engineers, in a way. They are driving manual cars one-handed at 200 miles per hour around streets in Monaco. These cars use the ultimate in technology.

While still a young student at film school, I was lucky enough to get a golden ticket to a Martin Scorsese master class at BAFTA in Piccadilly: fancy, but technically still 'the flicks'.

I love telling stories with images. But I think there's more to just saying a movie is great visually.

The worst thing ever for me is go see a movie, and the next day I go, 'What did I do last night? I have no memory of this $300 million movie I watched because I felt nothing.'

I wanted to study film at an art school - I loved the idea of being surrounded by designers and artists. We were encouraged to be experimental.

As a kid, I thought movies were boring. My parents would hire VHS recorders for the weekend and watch Bollywood movies. I'd get bored and go out to Stoke Newington common to play football.

There's this great TV show we have called 'Later... with Jools Holland', a live-music show on Friday nights. Anyone and everyone's been on it.

My family didn't film anything. But then you look deeper and realize, maybe there are photographs, there are things. It's also context: You give something a context, and suddenly it becomes really deep or meaningful footage.

If I'm going to do something, I'm going to spend however long it takes to get it right.

In a film called 'Senna,' the clue is in the title, and we have a Brazilian badge on our sleeve as we were making it. We were making it from Senna's point of view, with Senna narrating it.

I never know going in if I've even got a movie to make. Once you start making a film, you hope there's going to be enough material! My job as a director is always to push for more.

I studied graphic design originally. I used to like drawing, and I was quite into technical drawing. I was always interested in the visual medium, but I thought I was going to be an architect or something like that, but it's quite a lonely job.

Do the Right Thing' has been a big influence on me. I saw it when it first came out in 1989. I was about 18, and it blew me away on many levels - I had never seen anything like it before.

I don't normally make documentaries. I'm a drama director. I've made a few short docs, but I don't like talking heads or 'voice of God' narrators.

My team and I used the actual footage to create a three-act story of the life of Ayrton Senna. There are no talking heads and no voiceover. Senna narrates his own epic, dramatic, thrilling journey.

I was a sports fan long before I had any interest in film-making.

My background is Indian, so I believe in a spiritual idea that there is another level, another layer or layers, if you will, above us. I believe that there are elements that allow things to be drawn together, a sort of energy.

Hopefully with digital projection, a film will always look the way the filmmaker intended.

We were studying at Newport Film School, and I found that the only way for me to make films - because you need people and you need equipment - was that I had to be a student.

I just loved films. I knew I wanted to work on film, not video.

I made several short films with very little dialogue. I'm still not a fan of talking heads. My stories are told with images as much as possible.

My films often have a spiritual dimension which comes from my Muslim background, and I'm happy to tackle that in cinema.

I'd always intended to make 'Far North' straight after 'The Warrior.' We had the rights to the short story, the script was in development, and I knew where I wanted to shoot it. It just took a long time getting the script together and raising the finance.

I often make films about subjects I don't really know much about. Maybe it's laziness, but I don't go in there having done a tonne of research; the research happens while I'm making the film.

As a filmmaker, you complete a film you have spent years obsessively making, and you know the release prints will never look quite the same; prints get scratched and dirty.

A lot of the time when I'm working, I'm abroad.

Why make a movie about Ayrton Senna? Someone who drove around in circles at 200mph in a car that looked like a giant cigarette packet? Why would anyone who isn't already a fan of Formula 1 care?

'Amy' is somewhere in the middle of authorized and unauthorized.

I lived in Camden, Primrose Hill and Kentish Town for 10 years.

I'm a sport fan. So, I have always watched everything, and I used to watch racing. Formula One was always on. The genius about it is that it's on at lunchtime on a Sunday.

Martin Scorsese was being given an honorary doctorate, and one of the tutors asked if there was a student film he particularly liked. He mentioned our film. There was a dinner after the final show just for the tutors, but I was smuggled in to meet Scorsese over dessert.

The Monaco Grand Prix is in May right around the time of Cannes.

I don't really rely on watching video monitors. They put you at a certain distance from your actors, and it makes me feel less a part of what's really happening in the scene.

Weirdly enough, I live in London - was born there and have lived there all my life - but I hadn't made a film in London for a long time. I hadn't found the right subject. I liked going away, to some far flung place.

I worked with Michelle Yeoh on my last film, 'Far North,' and her partner is Jean Todt; at the time, he ran Ferrari. So I went as a VIP to the British grand prix.

You can't stop people watching on mobiles, but I hope the old fashioned idea of sitting in a dark room with a big screen with a group of strangers lives on forever.

Boxing is made for film - there is corruption, violence, tragedy and the chance that the underdog can catch the champion with one lucky punch.

For me, 'Amy' is a very dark film about love.

I like to make films where I learn along the way, like the audience.

Real life is far more complicated than fiction.

Directing can be very lonely and quite intimidating.

People have always been recording what's going on around them in one form or another.